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THE    NEW    CRITICISM 


COLUMBIA 

UNIVERSITY   PRESS 

SALES  AGENTS 

NEW  YORK: 

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THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

A   LECTURE 

DELIVERED  AT  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 
MARCH   9,    19 lo 

BY 

J.  E.  SPINGARN 

PROFESSOR    OF    COMPARATIVE    LITERATURE 
IN    COLUMBIA    UNIVERSITY 


New  York 

The  Columbia  University  Press 

1911 


COPTBIGHT,   1911, 

By  the  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  PRESS. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  February,  ign. 


J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


NOTE 

The  present  paper  on  the  Newer  Ideals  of 
Criticism  formed  the  concluding  lecture  of  a 
series  on  the  Literatures  of  the  World  deliv- 
ered by  a  number  of  the  professors  of  Colum- 
bia University  during  the  winter  of  1909-10. 
It  was  first  published  (under  the  general  title 
of  "  Literary  Criticism ")  in  the  Columbia 
University  Lectures  on  Literature,  from  which 
it  is  now  reprinted. 


THE  NEW   CRITICISM 

"What  droll  creatures  these  college  pro- 
fessors are  whenever  they  talk  about  art," 
wrote  Flaubert  in  one  of  his  letters,  and  voiced 
the  world's  opinion  of  academic  criticism. 
For  the  world  shares  the  view  of  the  Italian 
poet  that  "monks  and  professors  cannot 
write  the  lives  of  poets,"  and  looks  only  to 
those  rich  in  literary  experience  for  its  opin- 
ions on  Literature.  But  the  poets  themselves 
have  had  no  special  grudge  against  academic 
criticism  that  they  have  not  felt  equally  for 
every  other  kind.  For  the  most  part,  they 
have  objected  to  all  criticism,  since  what  each 
mainly  seeks  in  his  own  case  is  not  criticism, 
but  uncritical  praise.  "Kill  the  dog,  he  is  a 
reviewer,"  cried  the  young  Goethe;  and  in 
our  own  age  William  Morris  expressed  his 
contempt  for  those  who  earn  a  livelihood  by 
writing  their  opinions  of  the  works  of  others. 

1 


2  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

Fortunately  for  criticism,  it  does  not  live  by 
the  grace  of  poets,  to  whom  it  can  be  of  small 
service  at  its  best,  but  by  the  grace  of  others 
who  have  neither  the  poet's  genius  nor  the 
critic's  insight.  I  hope  to  persuade  you  this 
evening  that  the  poets  have  been  mistaken 
in  their  very  conception  of  the  critic's  craft, 
which  lives  by  a  power  that  poets  and  critics 
share  together.  The  secret  of  this  power  has 
come  to  men  slowly,  and  the  knowledge  they 
have  gained  by  it  has  transformed  their  idea 
of  Criticism.  What  this  secret  is,  and  into 
what  new  paths  Criticism  is  being  led  by  it, 
is  the  subject  of  my  lecture  to-night. 

At  the  end  of  the  last  century,  France  once 
more  occupied  the  centre  of  that  stage  whose 
auditors  are  the  inheritors  of  European  civili- 
zation. Once  more  all  the  world  listened 
while  she  talked  and  played,  and  some  of  the 
most  brilliant  of  her  talk  was  now  on  the  ques- 
tion of  the  authority  of  Criticism.  It  is  not 
my  purpose  to  tell  you  (what  you  know  al- 
ready) with  what  sober  and  vigorous  learning 
the  official  critics  of  the  Revue  des  deux  Mondes 


_5^SS_ 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM 


espoused  the  cause  of  old  gods  with  the  new 
weapons  of  science,  and  with  what  charm  and 
ti^ct,  with  what  grace  and  suppleness  of 
thought,  Jules  Lemaltre  and  Anatole  France, 
to  mention  no  others,  defended  the  free  play 
of  the  appreciative  mind.  Some  of  the  sparks 
that  were  beaten  out  on  the  anvil  of  contro- 
versy have  become  fixed  stars,  the  classical 
utterances  of  Criticism,  as  when  Anatole 
France  described  the  critic  not  as  a  judge 
imposing  sentence,  but  as  a  sensitive  soul 
detailing  his  "adventures  among  master- 
pieces." 

-^  To  have  sensations  in  the  presence  of  a 
work  of  art  and  to  express  them,  that  is  the 
function  of  Criticism  for  the  impressionistic 
critic.  His  attitude  he  would  express  some- 
what in  this  fashion:  "Here  is  a  beautiful 
poem,  let  us  say  'Prometheus  Unbound.'  To 
read  it  is  for  me  to  experience  a  thrill  of  pleas- 
ure. My  delight  in  it  is  itself  a  judgment, 
and  what  better  judgment  is  it  possible  for 
me  to  give  ?  All  that  I  can  do  is  to  tell  how 
it  ajffects  me,   what  sensations  it  gives  me. 


JHH^ 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM 


w 


Other  men  will  derive  other  sensations  from 
it,    and   express   them   differently;    they   too 
have  the  same  right  as  I.     Each  of  us,  if  we 
are  sensitive  to  impressions  and  express  our- 
selves well,  will  produce  a  new  work  of  art  to 
replace  the  work  which  gave  us  our  sensations. 
That  is  the  art  of  criticism,  and  beyond  that 
criticism  cannot  go."     We  shall  not  begrudge 
this  exquisite  soul  the  pleasure  of  his  sensa- 
tions or  his  cult  of  them,  nor  would  he  be  dis- 
concerted if  we  were  to  point  out  that  the 
interest  has  been  shifted  from  the  work  of  art 
to  his  own  impressions.     Let  us  suppose  that 
you  say  to  him:   "We  are  not  interested  in 
you,  but  in  'Prometheus  Unbound.'     To  de- 
scribe the  state  of  your  health  is  not  to  help 
us  to  understand  or  to  enjoy  the  poem.     Your 
criticism  constantly,  tends  to  get  away  from 
the  work  of  art,  and  to  centre  attention  on 
yourself  and  your  feelings."     But  his  answer 
would  not  be  difficult  to  find :  "What  you  say 
is  true  enough.     My  criticism  tends  to  get 
farther  and  farther  from  the  work  of  art  and 
to  cast  a  light  upon  myself;  but  all  criticism 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM 


\ 


I  tends  to  get  away  from  the  work  of  art  and 

I  to  substitute  something  in  its  place.  The 
impressionist  substitutes  himself,  but  what 
other  form  of  criticism  gets  closer  to  'Prome- 
theus Unbound '  ?  Historical  criticism  takes 
us  away  from  it  in  a  search  of  the  environ- 
ment, the  age,  the  race,  the  poetic  school  of 
the  artist;  it  tells  us  to  read  the  history  of 
the  French  Revolution,  Godwin's  'Political 
Justice,'  the  'Prometheus  Bound'  of  vEschylus, 
and  Calderon's  '  Magico  Prodigioso.'  Psycho- 
logical criticism  takes  me  away  from  the  poem, 
and  sets  me  to  work  on  the  biography  of  the 
poet;  I  wish  to  enjoy  'Prometheus  Unbound,' 
and  instead  I  am  asked  to  become  acquainted 
with   Shelley   the   man.     Dogmatic   criticism 

■(  does  not  get  any  closer  to  the  work  of  art  by 
^    j  testing  it  according  to  rules  and    standards ; 

'  it  sends  me  to  the  Greek  dramatists,  to  Shaks- 
pere,  to  Aristotle's  'Poetics,'  possibly  to 
Darwin's  'Origin  of  Species,'  in  order  that 
I  may  see  how  far  Shelley  has  failed  to  give 
dramatic  reality  to  his  poem,  or  has  failed  to 
observe  the  rules  of  his  genre;  but  that  means 


6  THE  NEW   CRITICISM 

the  study  of  other  works,  and  not  of  'Prome- 
theus Unbound.'  ^Esthetics  takes  me  still 
farther  afield  into  speculations  on  art  and 
beauty.  And  so  it  is  with  every  form  of 
criticism.    Do  not  deceive  yourself.     All  criti- 

/  cism  tends  to  shift  the  interest  from  the  work 

^  of  art  to  something  else.  The  other  critics 
give  us  history,  politics,  biographj^,  erudition, 
metaphysics.  As  for  me,  I  re-dream  the  poet's 
dream,  and  if  I  seem  to  write  lightly,  it  is 
because  I  have  awakened,  and  smile  to  think 

,  I  have  mistaken  a  dream  for  reality.  I  at 
least  strive  to  replace  one  work  of  art  by 
another,  and  art  can  only  find  its  alter  ego  in 

1  art." 

It  would  be  idle  to  detail  the  arguments  with 
which  the  advocates  of  the  opposing  forms  of 
Criticism  answered  these  questionings.  Lit- 
erary erudition  and  evolutionary  science  were 
the  chief  weapons  used  to  fight  this  modern 
heresy,  but  the  one  is  an  unwieldy  and  the 
other  a  useless  weapon  in  the  field  of  aesthetic 
thought.  On  some  sides,  at  least,  the  position 
of  the  impressionists  was  impregnable;    but 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM 


two  points  of  attack  were  open  to  their  oppo- 
nents. They  could  combat  the  notion  that 
ta'^te  is  a  substitute  for  learning,  or  learning 
a  substitute  for  taste,  since  both  are  vital  for 
Criticism;  and  they  could  maintain  that  the 
relativity  of  taste  does  not  in  any  sense  affect 
its  authority.  But  these  arguments  are  not 
my  present  concern  ;  what  I  wish  to  point  out 
is  that  the  objective  andjdogmatic  forms  of 
Criticism  were  fighting  no  new  battle  against 
impressionistic  Criticism  in  that  decade  of 
controversy.  It  was  a  battle  as  old  as  the 
earliest  reflection  on  the  subject  of  poetry, 
if  not  as  old  as  the  sensitiveness  of  poets. 
Modern  literature  begins  with  the  same  doubts, 
with  the  same  quarrel.  In  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury the  Italians  were  formulating  that  classi- 
cal code  which  imposed  itself  on  Europe  for  two 
centuries,  and  which,  even  in  our  generation, 
Brunetiere  has  merely  disguised  under  the 
trappings  of  natural  science.  They  evolved 
the  dramatic  unities,  and  all  those  rules  which 
the  poet  Pope  imagined  to  be  "Nature  still 
but  Nature  methodized."     But  at  the   very 


8  TEE  NEW  CRITICISM 

moment  when  their  spokesman  Scaliger  was 
saying  that  "Aristotle  is  our  emperor,  the 
perpetual  dictator  of  all  the  fine  arts,"  anott^r 
Italian,  Pietro  Aretino,  was  insisting  that  there 
is  no  rule  except  the  whim  of  genius  and  no 
standard  of  judgment  beyond  individual  taste. 
The  Italians  passed  on  the  torch  to  the 
French  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  from 
that  day  to  this  the  struggle  between  the  two 
schools  has  never  ceased  to  agitate  the  progress 
of  Criticism  in  France.  Boileau  against  Saint- 
Evremond,  Classicists  against  Romanticists, 
dogmatists  against  impressionists,  —  the  anti- 
nomy is  deep  in  the  French  nature,  indeed 
in  the  nature  of  Criticism  itself.  Listen  to 
this:  *'It  is  not  for  the  purpose  of  deciding 
on  the  merit  of  this  noble  poet  [Virgil],  nor 
of  harming  his  reputation,  that  I  have  spoken 
so  freely  concerning  him.  The  world  will  con- 
tinue to  think  what  it  does  of  his  beautiful 
verses ;  and  as  for  me,  I  judge  nothing,  I  only 
say  what  I  think,  and  what  effect  each  of 
these  things  produces  on  my  heart  and  mind." 
Surely  these  words  are  from  the  lips  of  Le- 


i 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  9 

maitre  himself!  "I  judge  nothing;  I  only 
say  what  I  feel."  But  no,  these  are  the  utter- 
ances of  the  Chevalier  de  Mere,  a  wit  of  the 
age  of  Louis  XIV,  and  he  is  writing  to  the 
secretary  of  that  stronghold  of  authority, 
the  French  Academy.  For  some  men,  even  in 
the  age  of  Boileau,  criticism  was  nothing  but 
an  "adventure  among  masterpieces." 

No,  it  is  no  new  battle ;  it  is  the  perpetual 
conflict  of  Criticism.  In  every  age  impression- 
ism (or  enjoyment)  and  dogmatism  (or  judg--'' 
ment)  have  grappled  with  one  another.  They 
are  the  two  sexes  of  Criticism ;  and  to  say  that 
they  flourish  in  every  age  is  to  say  that  every 
age  has  its  masculine  as  well  as  its  feminine 
criticism,  —  the  masculine  criticism  that  may 
or  may  not  force  its  own  standards  on  Litera- 
ture, but  that  never  at  all  events  is  dominated 
by  the  object  of  its  studies ;  and  the  feminine  ^ 
criticism  that  responds  to  the  lure  of  art  with  a 
kind  of  passive  ecstasy.  In  the  age  of  Boileau 
it  was  the  masculine  type  which  gave  the 
tone  to  Criticism ;  in  our  own,  outside  of  the 
universities,  it  has  certainly  been  the  feminine. 


10  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

But  they  continue  to  exist  side  by  side,  ever 
falling  short  of  their  highest  powers,  unless 
mystically  mated, — judgment  erecting  its 
edicts  into  arbitrary  standards  and  conven- 
tions, enjoyment  lost  in  the  mazes  of  its  sensu- 
ous indecision. 

Yet  if  we  examine  these  opposing  forms  of 
Criticism  in  our  own  age,  we  shall  find,  I  think, 
that  they  are  not  wholly  without  a  common 
ground  to  meet  on ;  that,  in  fact,  they  are 
united  in  at  least  one  prepossession  which  they 
do  not  share  with  the  varying  forms  of  Criti- 
cism in  any  of  the  earlier  periods  of  its  history. 
The  Greeks  conceived  of  Literature,  not  as  an 
inevitable  expression  of  creative  power,  but  as 
a  reasoned  "imitation"  or  re-shaping  of  the 
materials  of  life;  for  Aristotle,  poetry  is  the 
result  of  man's  imitative  instinct,  and  differs 
from  history  and  science  in  that  it  deals  with 
the  probable  or  possible  rather  than  with  the 
real.  The  Romans  conceived  of  Literature  as 
a  noble  art,  intended  (though  under  the  guise  of 
pleasure)  to  inspire  men  with  high  ideals  of  life. 
The  classicists   of  the   sixteenth   and   seven- 


TEE  NEW  CRITICISM  11 


teenth  centuries  accepted  this  view  in  the  main ; 
for  them,  Literature  was  a  kind  of  exercise, 
—  a  craft  acquired  by  study  of  the  classics, 
and  guided  in  the  interpretation  of  nature  by 
the  traditions  of  Greek  and  Roman  art.  For 
these  men  Literature  was  as  much  a  product  of 
reason  as  science  or  history.  The  eighteenth 
century  compHcated  the  course  of  Criticism 
by  the  introduction  of  vague  and  novel  criteria, 
such  as  "imagination,"  "sentiment,"  and 
"taste."  But  with  the  Romantic  Movement 
there  developed  the  new  idea  which  coordinates 
all  Criticism  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Very 
early  in  the  century,  Mme.  de  Stael  and  others 
formulated  the  idea  that  Literature  is  an 
"expression  of  society."  Victor  Cousin 
founded  the  school  of  art  for  art's  sake,  enun- 
ciating "the  fundamental  rule,  that  expression 
is  the  supreme  law  of  art."  Later,  Sainte- 
Beuve  developed  and  illustrated  his  theory 
that  Literature  is  an  expression  of  personality. 
Still  later,  under  the  influence  of  natural 
science,  Taine  took  a  hint  from  Hegel  and 
elaborated  the  idea  that  Literature  is  an  ex- 


^ 


12  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

presslon  of  race,  age,  and  environment.  The 
extreme  impressionists  prefer  to  think  of  art  as 
the  exquisite  expression  of  delicate  and  fluctu- 
ating sensations  or  impressions  of  life.  But 
for  all  these  critics  and  theorists.  Literature  is 
an  expression  of  something,  of  experience  or 
emotion,  of  the  external  or  internal,  of  the 
man  himself  or  something  outside  the  man; 
"  !  yet  it  is  always  conceived  of  as  an  art  of  ex- 
pression. The  objective,  the  dogmatic,  the 
impressionistic  critics  of  our  day  may  set  for 
'  themselves  very  different  tasks,  but  the  idea  of 
^  expression  is  implicit  in  all  they  write.  They 
have,  as  it  were,  this  bond  of  blood :  they  are 
not  merely  man  and  woman,  but  brother  and 
sister;  and  their  father,  or  grandfather,  was 
Sainte-Beuve.  The  bitter  but  acute  analysis 
of  his  talent  which  Nietzsche  has  given  us  in 
the  "Twilight  of  the  Idols"  brings  out  very 
clearly  this  dual  side  of  his  seminal  power,  the 
feminine  sensitiveness  and  the  masculine  de- 
i  tachment.  For  Nietzsche,  he  is  "nothing  of  a 
man ;  he  wanders  about,  delicate,  curious, 
tired,    pumping   people,    a   female   after    all. 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  13 

with  a  woman's  revengefulness  and  a  woman's 
sensuousness,  a  critic  without  a  standard, 
without  firmness,  and  without  backbone." 
Here  it  is  the  impressionist  in  Sainte-Beuve 
that  arouses  the  German's  wrath.  But  in  the 
same  breath  we  find  Nietzsche  blaming  him 
for  "holding  up  objectivity  as  a  mask";  and 
it  is  on  this  objective  side  that  Sainte-Beuve 
becomes  the  source  of  all  those  historical  and 
psychological  forms  of  critical  study  which 
have  influenced  the  academic  thought  of  our 
day,  leading  insensibly,  but  inevitably,  from 
empirical  investigation  to  empirical  law.  The 
pedigree  of  the  two  schools  thereafter  is  not 
difficult  to  trace  :  on  the  one  side,  from  Sainte- 
Beuve  through  Vart  pour  Vart  to  impressionism, 
and  on  the  other,  from  Sainte-Beuve  through 
Taine  to  Brunetiere  and  his  egregious  kin. 

French  criticism  has  been  leaning  heavily  on 
the  idea  of  expression  for  a  century  or  more, 
but  no  attempt  has  been  made  in  France  to 
understand  its  aesthetic  content,  except  for  a 
few  vague  echoes  of  German  thought.  For  the 
first  to  give  philosophic  precision  to  the  theory 


14  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

of  expression,  and  to  found  a  method  of  Criti- 
cism based  upon  it,  were  the  Germans  of  the 
age  that  stretches  from  Herder  to  Hegel.  All 
the  forces  of  philosophical  thought  were  fo- 
cused on  this  central  concept,  while  the  critics 
enriched  themselves  from  out  this  golden  store. 
I  suppose  you  all  remember  the  famous  passage 
in  which  Carlyle  describes  the  achievement  of 
German  criticism  in  that  age.  "Criticism," 
says  Carlyle,  "has  assumed  a  new  form  in 
Germany.  It  proceeds  on  other  principles 
and  proposes  to  itself  a  higher  aim.  The  main 
question  is  not  now  a  question  concerning  the 
qualities  of  diction,  the  coherence  of  meta- 
phors, the  fitness  of  sentiments,  the  general 
logical  truth  in  a  work  of  art,  as  it  was  some  half 
century  ago  among  most  critics ;  neither  is  it 
a  question  mainly  of  a  psychological  sort  to  be 
answered  by  discovering  and  delineating  the 
peculiar  nature  of  the  poet  from  his  poetry,  as  is 
usual  with  the  best  of  our  own  critics  at  pres- 
ent :  but  it  is,  not  indeed  exclusively,  but  inclu- 
sively of  its  two  other  questions,  properly  and 
ultimately  a  question  of  the  essence  and  peculiar 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  15 

life  of  the  poetry  itself.  .  .  .  The  problem  is 
not  now  to  determine  by  what  mechanism  Ad- 
dison composed  sentences  and  struck  out  simili- 
tudes, but  by  what  far  finer  and  more  mysteri- 
ous mechanism  Shakspere  organized  his  dramas 
and  gave  life  and  individuality  to  his  Ariel  and 
his  Hamlet.  Wherein  lies  that  life ;  how  have 
they  attained  that  shape  and  individuality  ? 
Whence  comes  that  empyrean  fire  which  irra- 
diates their  whole  being  and  appears  at  least 
in  starry  gleams  ?  Are  these  dramas  of  his 
not  veri-similar  only,  but  true ;  nay,  truer  than 
reality  itself,  since  the  essence  of  unmixed 
reality  is  bodied  forth  in  them  under  more  ex- 
pressive similes  ?  What  is  this  unity  of  pleas- 
ures ;  and  can  our  deeper  inspection  discern 
it  to  be  indivisible  and  existing  by  necessity 
because  each  work  springs  as  it  were  from 
the  general  elements  of  thought  and  grows 
up  therefrom  into  form  and  expansion  by  its 
own  growth  ?  Not  only  who  was  the  poet 
and  how  did  he  compose;  but  what  and  how 
was  the  poem,  and  why  was  it  a  poem  and  not 
rhymed  eloquence,  creation  and  not  figured 


16  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

passion  ?      These   are   the  questions   for   the 

yi    critic.     Criticism   stands   Hke    an    interpreter 

^\\  between    the    inspired    and    the    uninspired ; 

.^        between  the  prophet  and  those  who  hear  the 

I  melody  of  his  words  and  catch  some  ghmpse 

of    their    material    meaning    but    understand 

not  their  deeper  import." 

I  am  afraid  that  no  German  critic  wholly 
realized  this  ideal ;  but  it  was  at  least  the 
,i      achievement  of  the  Germans  that  they  enun- 
^^^y'^''^     ciated  the  doctrine,  even  if  they  did  not  always 
adequately  illustrate  it  in  practice.     It  was 
[  they  who  first  realized  that  art  has  performed 
\yl  its  function  when  it  has  expressed  itself ;  it 
'^^  '  was   they   who   first   conceived   of   Criticism 

\  as  the  study  of  expression.  *' There  is  a  de- 
structive and  a  creative  or  constructive  criti- 
cism," said  Goethe;  the  first  measures  and 
tests  Literature  according  to  mechanical  stand- 
ards, the  second  answers  the  fundamental 
questions:  "What  has  the  writer  proposed 
to  himself  to  do  ^  and  how  far  has  he  suc- 
ceeded in  carrying  out  his  own  plan  "?  "  Car- 
lyle,   in   his   essay   on    Goethe,    almost   uses 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  17 

Goethe's  own  words,  when  he  says  that  the 
critic's  first  and  foremost  duty  is  to  make 
plain  to  himself  "what  the  poet's  aim  really 
and  truly  was,  how  the  task  he  had  to  do 
stood  before  his  eye,  and  how  far,  with  such 
'  materials  as  were  afforded  him,  he  has  fulfilled 
it."  This  has  been  the  central  problem,  the 
guiding  star,  of  all  modern  criticism.  From 
Coleridge  to  Pater,  from  Sainte-Beuve  to 
Lemattre,  this  is  what  critics  have  been  striv- 
ing for,  even  when  they  have  not  succeeded; 
yes,  even  when  they  have  been  deceiving  them- 
selves into  thinking  that  they  were  striving 
for  something  else.  This  was  not  the  ideal 
of  Aristotle  when  he  tells  us  that  the  critic 
may  censure  a  work  of  art  as  "  irrational, 
impossible,  morally  hurtful,  self-contradictory, 
or  contrary  to  technical  correctness."  This 
was  not  Boileau's  standard  when  he  blamed 
Tasso  for  the  introduction  of  Christian  rather 
than  pagan  mythology  into  epic  poetry ;  nor 
Addison's,  when  he  tested  "Paradise  Lost" 
according  to  the  rules  of  Le  Bossu ;  nor  Dr. 
Johnson's,  when  he  laments  the  absence  of 


18  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 


poetic  justice  in  "King  Lear,"  or  pronounces 
dogmatically  that  the  poet  should  not  "num- 
ber the  streaks  of  the  tulip."     What  has  the 
f  poet  tried  to  do,  and  how  has  he  fulfilled  his 
I    intention?     What   is   he   striving   to   express 
/    and   how    has   he   expressed    it?     What   im- 
pression does  his  work  make  on  me,  and  how 
\  can  I  best  express   this   impression  ?     These 
^  are    the    questions    that    nineteenth-century 
critics  have  been  taught  to  ask  when  face  to 
face  with  the  work  of  a  poet. 

The  theory   of  expression,   the  concept  of 
^  j    Literature  as  an  art  of  expression,  is  the  com- 
*    mon  ground  on  which  critics  have  met  for  a 
i    century   or   more.     Yet   how   many   absurd- 
ities,   how   many   complicated   systems,    how 
many    confusions,   have    been    superimposed 
on   this   fundamental   idea;    and   how  slowly 
has  its  full  significance  become  the  possession 
of   critics  !     To    accept   the   naked   principle 
is  to  play  havoc  with  these  confusions  and 
complications ;  and  no  one  has  seen  this  more 
clearly,  or  driven  home  its  inevitable  conse- 
quences   with    more    intelligence    and    vigor,  i 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  19 


than    an    Italian    thinker    and    critic    of    our 
own  day,  Benedetto  Croce,  who  has  received 
of  late  a  kind  of  official  introduction  to  the 
English-speaking  world  in  the  striking  com- 
pliment  paid   to   him   by  Mr.  Balfour   in   a 
recent    Romanes    Lecture.     But    I    for    one 
needed  no  introduction   to  his  work;   under 
/  his  banner  I  enrolled  myself  long  ago,   and 
f   here  re-enroll  myself  in  what  I  now  say.     He 
"^  '    has  led  sesthetic  thought  inevitably  from  the 
/  concept   that   art   is   expression   to   the   con- 
\  elusion  that  all  expression  is  art.     Time  does 
not  permit,  nor  reason  ask,  that  we  should 
follow  this  argument  through  all  its  pros  and 
cons.     If  this  theory  of  expression  be  once  and 
for  all  accepted,  as  indeed  it  has  been  partly 
though   confusedly    accepted   by   all   modern  - 
critics,  the  ground  of  Criticism  is  cleared  of 
its   dead   lumber   and   its   weeds.     I  propose 
now  merely   to  point  out  this   dead  lumber 
and  these  weeds.     In  other  words,  we  shall 
see  to  what  conclusions  the  critical  thought 
and  practice  of  a  century  have  been  inevitably 
converging,   and   what   elements    of   the    old 


20  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

Criticism  and  the  old  literary  history  are  dis- 
appearing from  the  new. 
^'  In  the  first  place,  we  have  done  with  all  the 
old  Rules.  The  very  conception  of  "rules" 
harks  back  to  an  age  of  magic,  and  reminds 
the  modern  of  those  mysterious  words  which 
the  heroes  of  the  fairv-tales  are  without  reason 
forbidden  to  utter;  the  rules  are  a  survival 
of  the  savage  taboo.  We  find  few  arbitrary 
rules  in  Aristotle,  who  limited  himself  to 
empirical  inductions  from  the  experience  of 
Literature ;  but  they  appear  in  the  later  Greek 
rhetoricians  ;  and  in  the  Romans  empirical  in- 
duction has  been  hardened  into  dogma.  Hor- 
ace lays  down  the  law  to  the  prospective  play- 
wright in  this  manner :  "You  must  never  have 
more  than  three  actors  on  the  stage  at  any  one 
time;  you  must  never  let  your  drama  exceed 
five  acts."  It  is  unnecessary  to  trace  the 
history  of  these  rules,  or  to  indicate  how  they 
increased  in  number,  how  they  were  arranged 
into  a  system  by  the  classicists  of  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  how 
they  burdened  the  creative  art  of  that  period. 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  21 


They  were  never  without  their  enemies.  We 
have  seen  how  Aretino  was  pitted  against 
ScaHger,  Saint-Evremond  against  Boileau; 
and  in  every  age  the  poets  have  astounded 
the  critics  by  transgressing  rules  without  the 
sacrifice  of  beauty.  But  it  was  not  until  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century  that  the  Roman- 
ticists banished  them  from  the  province  of 
Criticism.  The  pedantry  of  our  own  day 
has  borrowed  "conventions"  from  history 
and  "technique"  from  science  as  substitutes 
for  the  outworn  formulae  of  the  past ;  but  these 
are  merely  new  names  for  the  old  mechanical 
rules;  and  they  too  will  go,  when  criticism\ 
clearly  recognizes  in  every  work  of  art  an 
organism  governed  by  its  own  law.  ' 

We  have  done  with  the  genres,  or  literary 
kinds.  Their  history  is  inseparably  bound  up  ^ 
with  that  of  the  classical  rules.  Certain  works 
of  literature  have  a  general  resemblance  and 
are  loosely  classed  together  (for  the  sake  of 
convenience)  as  lyric,  comedy,  tragedy,  epic, 
pastoral,  and  the  like;  the  classicists  made 
of  each  of  these  divisions  a  fixed  norm  gov- 


22  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

erned  by  inviolable  laws.  The  separation  of 
the  genres  was  a  consequence  of  this  law  of 
classicism :  comedy  should  not  be  mingled 
with  tragedy,  nor  epic  with  lyric.  But  no 
sooner  was  the  law  enunciated  than  it  was 
broken  by  an  artist  impatient  or  ignorant 
of  its  restraints,  and  the  critics  have  been 
obliged  to  explain  away  these  violations  of 
their  laws,  or  gradually  to  change  the  laws 
themselves.  But  if  art  is  organic  expression, 
and  every  work  of  art  is  to  be  interrogated 
with  the  question,  "What  has  it  expressed, 
and  how  completely.^"  there  is  no  place  for 
the  question  whether  it  has  conformed  to 
some  convenient  classification  of  critics  or  to 
some  law  derived  from  this  classification. 
The  lyric,  the  pastoral,  the  epic,  are  abstrac- 
tions without  concrete  reality  in  the  world 
of  art.  Poets  do  not  write  epics,  pastorals, 
f^l lyrics;  they  express  themselves,  and  this  ex- 
^^vApression  is  their  only  form.  There  are  not, 
therefore,  only  three,  or  ten,  or  a  hundred 
literary  kinds ;  there  are  as  many  kinds  as 
there  are  individual  poets.     But  it  is  in  the 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  23 

field  of  literary  history  that  this  error  is 
most  obvious.  Shakspere  wrote  "King  Lear," 
"Venus  and  Adonis,"  and  a  sequence  of  son- 
nets. What  becomes  of  Shakspere,  the  cre- 
ative artist,  when  these  three  works  are  sep- 
arated from  one  another  by  the  historian  of 
poetry ;  when  they  lose  their  connection  with 
his  single  creative  soul,  and  are  classified  with 
other  works  with  which  they  have  only  a 
loose  and  vague  relation  ?  To  slice  up  the  his- 
tory of  English  Literature  into  compartments 
marked  comedy,  tragedy,  lyric,  and  the  like, 
is  to  be  guilty  of  a  complete  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  meaning  of  Criticism ;  and  literary 
history  becomes  a  logical  absurdity  when  its 
data  are  not  organically  related  but  cut  up 
into  sections,  and  placed  in  such  compart- 
ments as  these. ->^ 

We  have  done  with  the  comic,  the  tragic,  the 
sublime,  and  an  army  of  vague  abstractions 
of  their  kind.  These  have  grow^n  out  of  the 
generalizations  of  the  Alexandrian  critics, 
acquiring  a  new  lease  of  life  in  the  eighteenth 
century.     Gray   and  his   friend   West   corre- 


24  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

sponded  with  each  other  on  the  subject  of  the 
subHme ;  later,  Schiller  distinguished  between 
the  naif  and  the  sentimental.  Jean  Paul  was 
one  of  many  who  defined  humor,  and  Hegel 
among  those  who  defined  the  tragic.  If  these 
terms  represent  the  content  of  art,  they  may 
be  relegated  to  the  same  category  as  joy,  hate, 
sorrow,  enthusiasm ;  and  we  should  speak  of 
the  comic  in  the  same  general  way  in  which  we 
might  speak  of  the  expression  of  joy  in  a  poem. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  these  terms  represent 
abstract  classifications  of  poetry,  their  use 
in  criticism  sins  against  the  very  nature  of  art. 
Every  poet  re-expresses  the  universe  in  his 
own  way,  and  every  poem  is  a  new  and  in- 
dependent expression.  The  tragic  does  not 
exist  for  Criticism,  but  only  ^Eschylus,  Shak- 
spere,  Racine.  There  is  no  objection  to  the 
use  of  the  word  tragic  as  a  convenient  label 
for  somewhat  similar  poems,  but  to  find  laws 
for  the  tragic  and  to  test  creative  artists  by 
such  laws  as  these  is  simply  to  give  a  more 
abstract  form  to  the  outworn  classical  concep- 
tion of  dramatic  rules. 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  25 

We  have  done  with  the  theory  of  style,  with    1 
metaphor,   simile,   and   all   the  paraphernalia 
of  Grseco-Roman  rhetoric.     These  owe  their 
existence  to  the  assumption  that  style  is  sep-    < 
arated  from  expression,  that  it  is  something 
which   may   be  added   or  subtracted   at  will    | 

.1 

from  the  work  of  art.  But  we  know  that  art 
is  expression,  that  it  is  complete  in  itself,  that  >. 
to  alter  it  is  to  create  another  expression  and  ,1 
therefore  to  create  another  work  of  art.  If 
the  poet,  for  example,  says  of  springtime  that 
*"Tis  now  the  blood  runs  gold,"  he  has  not 
employed  a  substitute  for  something  else, 
such  as  "the  blood  tingles  in  our  veins";  he 
has  expressed  his  thought  in  its  completeness, 
and  there  is  no  equivalent  for  his  expression 
except  itself.  ~~ 

"Each  perfect  in  its  place;  and  each  content 
With  that  perfection  which  its  being  meant." 

Such  expressions  are  still  called  metaphors 
in  the  text-books ;  but  metaphor,  simile,  and 
all  the  old  terms  of  classical  rhetoric  are  signs 
of  the  zodiac,  magical  incantations,  astrologi- 
cal formulae,  interesting  only  to  antiquarian 


I 


26  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

curiosity.  To  Montaigne  they  suggested  "the 
prattle  of  chambermaids";  to  me  they  sug- 
gest rather  the  drone  and  singsong  of  many 
school-mistresses.  We  still  hear  talk  of  the 
"grand  style,"  and  essays  on  style  continue 
to  be  written,  like  the  old  "arts  of  poetry" 
of  two  centuries  ago ;  but  the  theory  of  styles 
has  no  longer  a  real  place  in  modern  thought ; 
we  have  learned  that  it  is  no  less  impossible 
to  study  style  as  separate  from  the  work  of 
art  than  to  study  the  comic  as  separate  from 
the  work  of  the  comic  artist. 

We  have  done  with  all  moral  judgment  of 
Literature.  Horace  said  that  pleasure  and 
profit  are  the  end  of  art,  and  for  many  cen- 
turies the  critics  quarreled  over  the  terms 
"pleasure"  and  "profit."  Some  said  that 
poetry  w^as  meant  to  instruct ;  some,  merely 
to  please ;  some,  to  do  both.  Romantic  criti-l 
cism  first  enunciated  the  principle  that  art 
has  no  aim  except  expression ;  that  its  aim  is  "^ 
complete  when  expression  is  complete;  that! 
"beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being."  If) 
the  achievement  of  the  poet  be  to  express  any 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  27 

material  he  may  select,  and  to  express  it  with 
a  completeness  that  we  recognize  as  perfec- 
tion, obviously  morals  can  play  no  part  in 
the  judgment  which  criticism  may  form  of  his 
work.  No  critic  of  authority  now  tests  lit- 
erature by  the  standards  of  ethics. 

We  have  done  with  "dramatic"  criticism. 
The  theory  that  the  drama  is  not  a  creative 
art,  but  a  by-product  of  the  physical  exigencies 
of  the  theatre,  is  as  old  as  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. An  Italian  scholar  of  that  age  was  the 
first  to  maintain  that  plays  are  intended  to 
be  acted  on  a  stage,  under  certain  restricted 
physical  conditions,  and  before  a  large  and 
heterogeneous  crowd ;  dramatic  performance 
has  developed  out  of  these  conditions,  and  the 
test  of  its  excellence  is  the  pleasure  it  gives 
to  the  mixed  audience  that  supports  it.  This 
idea  was  taken  hold  of  by  some  of  the  German 
romanticists,  for  the  purpose  of  justifying  the 
Shaksperean  drama  in  its  apparent  divergence 
from  the  classical  "rules."  Shakspere  cannot 
be  judged  by  the  rules  of  the  Greek  theatre 
(so  ran  their  argument),  for  the  drama  is  an 


28  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

inevitable  product  of  theatrical  conditions; 
these  conditions  in  Elizabethan  England  were 
not  the  same  as  those  of  Periclean  Athens ;  and 
it  is  therefore  absurd  to  judge  Shakspere's 
practice  by  that  of  Sophocles.  Here  at  least 
the  idea  helped  to  bring  Shakspere  home  to 
many  new  hearts  by  ridding  the  age  of  mis- 
taken prejudices,  and  served  a  useful  purpose, 
as  a  specious  argument  may  persuade  men  to 
contribute  to  a  noble  work,  or  a  mad  fanatic 
may  rid  the  world  of  a  tyrant.  But  with  this 
achievement  its  usefulness  but  not  its  life  was 
ended.  It  has  been  developed  into  a  system, 
and  become  a  dogma  of  dramatic  critics;  it 
is  our  contemporary  equivalent  for  the  *' rules" 
of  seventeenth-century  pedantry.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  dramatic  artist  is  to  be  judged 
by  no  other  standard  than  that  applied  to  any 
other  creative  artist :  what  has  he  tried  to 
express,  and  how  has  he  expressed  it  ^  It 
is  true  that  the  theatre  is  not  only  an  art  but 
a  business,  and  the  so-called  "success"  of  a 
play  is  of  vital  interest  to  the  theatre  in  so 
far  as  it  is  a  commercial  undertaking.     The 


TEE  NEW  CRITICISM  29 


test  of  "success"  is  an  economic  test,  and 
concerns  not  art  or  the  criticism  of  art,  but 
political  economy.  Valuable  contributions  to 
economic  and  social  history  have  been  made  by 
students  who  have  investigated  the  changing 
conditions  of  the  theatre  and  the  vicissitudes 
of  taste  on  the  part  of  theatrical  audiences; 
but  these  have  the  same  relation  to  criticism, 
and  to  the  drama  as  an  art,  that  a  history 
of  the  publisher's  trade  and  its  influence  on 
the  personal  fortunes  of  poets  would  bear  to 
the  history  of  poetry. 

We  have  done  with  technique  as  separate^ 
from  art.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  style  I 
cannot  be  disassociated  from  art;  and  the 
false  air  of  science  which  the  term  "tech- 
nique" seems  to  possess  should  not  blind  us  to 
the  fact  that  it  too  involves  the  same  error. 
"Technique  is  really  personality;  that  is  the 
reason  why  the  artist  cannot  teach  it,  why  the 
pupil  cannot  learn  it,  and  why  the  aesthetic 
critic  can  understand  it,"  says  Oscar  Wilde, 
in  a  dialogue  on  "The  Critic  as  Artist," 
which,  amid  much  perversity  and  paradox,  is 


30  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

illumined  by  many  flashes  of  strange  insight. 
/The  technique  of  poetry  cannot  be  separated 
from  its  inner  nature.  Versification  cannot  be 
studied  by  itself,  except  loosely  and  for  con- 
venience ;  it  remains  always  an  inherent  quality 
of  the  single  poem.     Milton's  line :  — 

"These  my  sky-robes  spun  out  of  Iris'  woof" 

is  called  an  iambic  pentameter;  but  it  is  not 
true  that  artistically  it  has  something  in  com- 
mon with  every  other  line  possessing  the  same 
succession  of  syllables  and  accents;  in  this 
sense  it  is  not  an  iambic  pentameter ;  it  is  only 
one  thing ;  it  is  the  line :  — 

"These  my  sky-robes  spun  out  of  Iris'  woof." 

We  have  done  with  the  history  and  criti- 
.  cism  of  poetic  themes.  It  is  possible  to  speak 
loosely  of  the  handling  of  such  a  theme  as 
Prometheus  by  iEschylus  and  by  Shelley, 
of  the  story  of  Francesca  da  Rimini  by  Dante, 
Stephen  Phillips,  and  D'Annunzio ;  but  strictly 
speaking,  they  are  not  employing  the  same 
theme   at   all.     Each    artist   is   expressing   a 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  31 

certain  material  and  labeling  it  with  an  historic 
name.  For  Shelley  Prometheus  is  only  a 
label ;  he  is  expressing  his  artistic  conception 
of  life,  not  the  history  of  a  Greek  Titan ;  it 
is  the  vital  flame  he  has  breathed  into  his 
work  that  makes  it  what  it  is,  and  with 
this  vital  flame  (and  not  with  labels)  the 
critic  should  concern  himself  in  the  works  "^ 
of  poets. 

We  have  done  with  the  race,  the  time,  the^ 
environment  of  a  poet's  work  as  an  element  / 
in  criticism.  To  study  these  phases  of  a  work 
of  art  is  to  treat  it  as  an  historic  or  social  docu- 
ment, and  the  result  is  a  contribution  to  the 
history  of  culture  or  civilization,  without  pri- 
mary interest  for  the  history  of  art.  "Granted 
the  times,  the  environment,  the  race,  the  pas- 
sions of  the  poet,  what  has  he  done  with  his 
materials,  how  has  he  converted  poetry  out 
of  reality?"  To  answer  this  question  of  the 
Italian  De  Sanctis  as  it  refers  to  each  single 
work  of  art  is  to  perform  what  is  truly  the 
critic's  vital  function;  this  is  to  interpret 
"expression"   in   its    rightful    sense,    and    to 


32  THE  NEW  CRITICISM 

j  liberate  aesthetic  Criticism  from  the  vassalage 
to  Kulturgeschichte  imposed  on  it  by  the  school 
of  Taine. 

/We  have  done  with  the  "evolution"  of 
•-Literature.  The  concept  of  progress  was 
first  applied  to  Literature  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  but  at  the  very  outset  Pascal  pointed 
out  that  a  distinction  must  here  be  made  be- 
tween science  and  art ;  that  science  advances 
by  accumulation  of  knowledge,  while  the 
changes  of  art  cannot  be  reduced  to  any  theory 
of  progress.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  theory 
involves  the  ranking  of  poets  according  to 
some  arbitrary  conception  of  their  value; 
and  the  ranking  of  writers  in  order  of  merit 
has  become  obsolete,  except  in  the  "hundred 
best  books"  of  the  last  decade  and  the  "five- 
foot  shelves"  of  to-day.  The  later  nineteenth 
century  gave  a  new  air  of  verisimilitude  to 
this  old  theory  by  borrowing  the  term  "evo- 
lution" from  science;  but  this  too  involves  a 
fundamental  misconception  of  the  free  and 
original  movement  of  art.  A  similar  mis- 
conception is  involved  in  the  study  of  the 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  33 

"origins"  of  art;  for  art  has  no  origin  sepa- 
rate from  man's  life. 

"In  climes  beyond  the  solar  road, 
Where  shaggy  forms  o'er  ice-built  mountains  roam, 
The  Muse  has  broke  the  twilight-gloom"; 

but  though  she  wore  savage  raiment,  she  was 
no  less  the  Muse.  Art  is  simple  at  times, 
complex  at  others,  but  it  is  always  art.  The 
simple  art  of  early  times  may  be  studied  with 
profit;  but  the  researches  of  anthropology 
have  no  vital  significance  for  criticism,  unless 
the  anthropologist  studies  the  simplest  forms 
of  art  in  the  same  spirit  as  the  highest;  that 
is,  unless  the  anthropologist  is  an  aesthetic 
critic. 

Finally,  we  have  done  with  the  old  rupture 
between  genius  and  taste.  When  Criticism 
first  propounded  as  its  real  concern  the  oft- 
repeated  question  :  "What  has  the  poet  tried 
to  express  and  how  has  he  expressed  it  .'^ " 
/Criticism  prescribed  for  itself  the  only  pos- 
V^sible  method.  How  can  the  critic  answer 
this  question  without  becoming   (if  only  for 


V 


34  TW^  NEW  CRITICISM 


^ 


/ 


f  a  moment  of  supreme  power)  at  one  with  the 
creator?  That  is  to  say,  taste  must  repro- 
duce the  work  of  art  within  itself  in  order  to 
understand  and  judge  it ;  and  at  that  moment 
aesthetic  judgment  becomes  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  creative  art  itself.  The  identity  of 
genius  and  taste  is  the  final  achievement 
of  modern  thought  on  the  subject  of  art,  and 

i  it  means  that  fundamentally  the  creative  and 
the  critical  instincts  are  one  and  the  same. 
From  Goethe  to  Carlyle,  from  Carlyle  to 
Arnold,  from  Arnold  to  Symons,  there  has  been 
much  talk  of  the  "creative  function"  of  Criti- 
cism. For  each  of  these  men  the  phrase  held  a 
different  content ;  for  Arnold  it  meant  merely 
that  criticism  creates  the  intellectual  atmos- 
phere of  the  age,  —  a  social  function  of  high 
importance,  perhaps,  yet  wholly  independent 
of  sesthetic  significance.  But  the  ultimate 
truth  toward  which  these  men  were  tending 
was  more  radical  than  that,  and  plays  havoc 
with  all  the  old  platitudes  about  the  sterility 
of  taste.  Criticism  at  last  can  free  itself  of 
its  age-long  self-contempt,  now  that  it  may 


THE  NEW  CRITICISM  35 

realize  that  aesthetic  judgment  and  artistic 
creation  are  instinct  with  the  same  vital  life. 
Without  this  identity,  Criticism  would  really 
be  impossible.  "Genius  is  to  aesthetics 
what  the  ego  is  to  philosophy,  the  only  su- 
preme and  absolute  reality,"  said  Schelling; 
and  without  subduing  the  mind  to  this  tran- 
scendental system,  it  remains  true  that  what 
must  always  be  inexplicable  to  mere  reflection 
is  just  what  gives  power  to  poetry;  that  in- 
tellectual curiosity  may  amuse  itself  by  ask- 
ing its  little  questions  of  the  silent  sons  of 
light,  but  they  vouchsafe  no  answer  to  art's 
pale  shadow,  thought ;  the  gods  are  kind  if 
they  give  up  their  secret  in  another  work  of 
art,  the  art  of  Criticism,  that  serves  as  some  '  ^ 
sort  of  mirror  to  the  art  of  Literature,  only 
because  in  their  flashes  of  insight  taste  and 
genius  are  one. 


V 
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